The second novel from Lee Rourke, author of the cult hit ‘The Canal’.Jon Michaels – a divorced, disaffected and fatigued editor living a nondescript life in North London – wakes one morning to a phone call informing him that his uncle has been found dead in his caravan on Canvey Island. Dismissed from his job only the day before and hung-over, Jon reluctantly agrees to sort through his uncle’s belongings and clear out the caravan. What follows is a quixotic week on Canvey as Jon, led on by desire and delusion, purposeful but increasingly disorientated, unfolds a disturbing secret, ever more enchanted by the island – its landscape and its atmosphere.Haunted and haunting, ‘Vulgar Things’ is part mystery, part romance, part odyssey: a novel in which the menial entrances and the banal compels.
Оглавление
Lee Rourke. Vulgar Things
COPYRIGHT
From the reviews of Vulgar Things:
DEDICATION
MAYBE SOMEONE IS WONDERING JUST WHAT I’M DOING HERE. an office
lunch hour
everything looks as it should
into a room
petty dramas
some sort of theatre
the phone call
FRIDAY. recollections
the island
being here makes perfect sense
because there’s nothing else to do
such a long time
caravan 27
SATURDAY. along the sea wall
eating in silence
into the depths
vulgar things
feel like walking
the stick
towards the sea
box 27
a kind of shuffle
floating in space
black screen
SUNDAY. the same girl
suburban drabness
falling
afternoon drinking
toledo road
language is such a mess
blackening
rerum vulgarium fragmenta
MONDAY. all colliding
stranded
signalling
a photographic list of dancers
painting the sky
being wrong
if you want anything
ejected and abandoned
something snaps
short circuit
you must have found something
haunting
some fucking present
path of saturn
TUESDAY. scene/image
camouflage
it’s a short chapter
a different narrative of the same thing
cliché
the underworld
failing light
pointless
it has to be her
they kiss
waxy with sweat
looming windows
artificial light flickers
blank space between the scenes
he won’t bite
part of the furniture
aggressive behaviour
it all happens quickly
just the silence
we understand that, sir
i tell you
WEDNESDAY. first train
another box
it feels wrong
motionless
drift along with them
whispers
no sense at all
pushing against us
looping at intervals
three thousand eight hundred
something hits
fishing
to the ground
random drawers
it stops
bags and boxes
it all becomes visible
need to move closer
i know this won’t last
THURSDAY. some kind of happiness
the voices float by
i had it in me
moving away from me
nothing can be deciphered
speak quietly
is it all finished?
it doesn’t feel like an ending
BACK IN THE NIGHT I LAY DOWN BY YOUR FIRESIDE. twinkling, silent, beautiful
title page
beacons all around me
some grand prologue
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Отрывок из книги
‘Sad, lost men looking for maps in the starry Essex sky, small-town strippers, absent mothers, angry brothers, planets photographed on smart phones, cider and a lot of rare steak – Rourke is on his way to becoming the J. G. Ballard of Southend-on-Sea’
Deborah Levy
.....
I stumble into the Griffin on Clerkenwell Road. What I can only describe as some kind of miasma, a fug of sorts, has blurred my vision, in fact my perception. I feel behind-time, having no idea at this moment what time it is or what I am really doing. I stand at the end of the bar, near the stage, sipping a whiskey, watching a girl dance around a pole. She is no more than twenty years of age, bored, filled with contempt for the assorted men salivating over her in the room. She is wonderful. I didn’t expect to think like this about her, having never ventured into a strip club before. I expected to hate everything and everyone in here, but something else has happened: some form of rapture.
I am soon interrupted by a small lady, maybe in her thirties, dressed in nothing but a red thong, heels and a latex tube around her chest. It looks crude. I suppose that’s the point. She thrusts a pint pot towards me.
